These are trying times for devotees of the decoction we call tea. On the one hand, their beloved beverage has made a shocking leap to the forefront of the American consciousness -- to use one metric, Google searches for phrases containing the word "tea" more than tripled over the past month alone.

On the other hand, this spike in interest has almost nothing to do with tea consumption as God (or Buddha) intended -- which is to say, actually drinking it.

The frustration of tea lovers over the headline-dominating furor of the bailout-bashing, tax-thrashing "Tea Party" movement isn't a matter of ideology. "I personally agree that these corporate bailouts have been a bad idea; I'm just not thrilled that people have decided to use tea to protest them," says George Jage, cofounder of the annual World Tea Expo, an annual tradeshow expected to draw more than 5,000 participants in Las Vegas from May 2-4. "What you're seeing as a result is tea being associated with a set of really negative emotions -- anger, bitterness, divisiveness -- and people are getting the idea that tea is something you can just throw around and waste. It's been incredibly damaging to our industry."

Worse yet for the tea set, the political theatrics have erased interest in other tea-related news -- such as the imminent arrival of the initial green tea harvest known as the "first flush," or shincha, which cognoscenti compare to the annual release of Beaujolais Nouveau.

All in all, as Candice "@TeaPriestess" Oneida, owner of a tea company in Austin, Tex., twittered to followers in a much re-posted tweet: "I'm looking forward to when 'tea' has once again been disassociated from 'tax.'"

Communi-tea, Connectivi-tea, Diversi-tea

Oneida and other tea evangelists point out that there's plenty to talk about tea that doesn't relate to politics.

Tea has been at the center of a quiet health revolution, says Rona Tison, North American vice president for Japanese tea giant Ito En. Green tea is a potent natural source of vitamin C and antioxidants, like EGCG; it assists with weight loss, inhibits cancer, boosts the cardiovascular system and improves bone density -- it even fights cavities and clear up complexions.

"And it's a proven antibacterial," Tison adds. "I'm Japanese on my mother's side, and I still remember my grandmother sprinkling damp tea leaves on her floors and sweeping them up with a broom to clean and disinfect them."

Then there's the social aspect: Few beverages have inspired as wide and as passionate a community of enthusiasts as tea lovers, in part because of its near universal appeal (tea is the second most popular beverage in the world, after water), but also because so much tea tradition is rooted in interpersonal relationships.

"From its very origins, tea has been a medium for connecting with other people," notes Lindsey Goodwin, a tea sommelier who blogs about the beverage at VeeTea.com. "There's a Japanese proverb that means, roughly, 'Passing through time and space, we may never meet again, so let's have a cup of tea together.' And among the Balti people of Tibet, the saying goes, 'The first time you share tea, you're a stranger; the second, you're an honored guest; the third time, you become family.'"

The Internet teems with tea-related blogs and boards, partly due to the surging popularity of tea in the world of technology. After all, the vast bulk of Silicon Valley's H1-B visa-bearing engineers hail from Asia and Eastern Europe, places where kids go directly from nipple to kettle. But even domestic-brewed digerati, like Digg founder Kevin Rose, are publicly trumpeting their love of leaf (he keeps a running tweetstream of his tea tastings and musings under the Twitter handle @goodtea).

There's a psychobiological rationale for techies gravitating to tea: The drink's unique chemical structure incorporates both caffeine and L-theanine, an amino acid naturally found only in tea and the somewhat less refreshing Bay Bolete mushroom.

"The caffeine in tea is a stimulant, but it doesn't make you jittery," Goodwin says. "That's because L-theanine tempers the effects of caffeine. It increases the level of alpha waves in the brain, so what you get is an alert, but relaxed state."

Zen and Now

Stimulation combined with relaxation Ð- it's the geek's holy grail. That's why researchers at Japan's Taiyo International developed a synthetic form of L-theanine, an ingredient in a range of functional refreshments like Gatorade's new "Tiger Focus," and the Pacific Northwest-based soda microbrand Zen Master.

Most marketing uses of the term "zen" tend to be throwaway orientalisms. Creative's "Zen" MP3 players, to be sure, offer no appreciable karmic advantages over the iPod -- but Zen Master bucks that trend. The attentive-but-mellow state promised by the caffeine and L-theanine combo is ideally suited for meditation, which explains, in turn, why tea culture's origins are so deeply rooted in Buddhism.

"It was a monk named Eisai who first brought tea seeds from China to Japan, back in 1191 AD," says Marybeth Welch, a New York-based artist and educator who has studied the Urasenke school of chanoyu, the Japanese "way of tea," for nearly 30 years. "It was another monk, Murata Shoko, who first transformed tea from a decadent pursuit into something contemplative, focused on honesty of the heart and appreciation of the humble environment."

Those traits, as codified by the tea master Sen no Rikyu into the "four principles" of chanoyu -- wa, kei, sei, jaku (harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility) -- have become the heart of the Japanese way of tea, quite a contrasting sensibility to the ones expressed in the rancorous Tea Party rituals we're witnessing in America today.

It's worth noting that while the Tea Parties have been criticized as pointless rabble-rousing, the response of the left has at times been ugly as well, dismissive of the real anger and anxiety of many participants and even, given constant references to the act of "teabagging," straying into homophobic humor. Here's a suggestion; maybe progressives should respond instead with chanoyu events -- austere and reflective celebrations whose message might mirror the effects of tea itself: Embrace the stimulus, and relax.

PopMail

The tea devotees I spoke with reiterated again and again that the Bay Area has increasingly become the tea capital of the United States: "San Francisco is absolutely the epicenter of the renaissance of tea in America," says Lindsey Goodwin. "You have people and cultures and cuisines are converging from all over the world there, even as market forces and new technology are making much more high-quality and hard-to-find tea available."

Add to that San Francisco's status as one of the world's preeminent foodie cities, and it's understandable why Goodwin labels the Bay Area "one of the hotbeds of global tea culture -- even more so than cities in China or India and other traditional tea nations. In those countries, you have people drinking the tea produced in their own backyards, and not bothering to try the product of the next nation or village over. Not so in San Francisco: You've got this amazing cross-pollination of ideas and pairings of food there that you won't find anywhere else in the world."

Goodwin also points to the plethora of tea luminaries in San Francisco, individuals like Winnie Yu of Berkeley's Teance, Jesse Jacobs of Samovar Tea Lounge and Roy Fong of Imperial Tea Court -- "He imports his tea directly from China, and has a huge hand in the actual processing! He's incredibly knowledgeable, probably one of the nation's foremost experts on Puer tea," an earthy, post-fermented variety of tea that hails from China's Yunnan region -- not to mention America's most colorful and quotable tea authority, James Norwood Pratt.

The tea renaissance has been inspired by another phenomenon is Northern California: Oenophilia. Ito En's Tison, who currently lives in Sonoma Valley, notes that the tea and wine connoisseur communities are rapidly starting to overlap. "Tea is very much like wine -- you have equal complexities, and a similar range of taste profiles," she says. "You have the same vast array of varietals, regional offerings and preparations. There's a whole sophisticated appreciation of tea that's developing as palates have evolved that looks a lot like wine culture."

With one big difference: Cost. "If you look at the price of tea, even wonderful, premium teas can cost as little as 20 cents a cup if you're brewing them yourself at home," Goodwin says. "And the thing is, not only does most tea survive multiple infusions, it actually thrives on it -- you can brew a single batch of leaves 20 or 30 times, or even more. The first cup won't taste like the last, but that's the beauty of it. You have a whole evolution of flavors coming from the same leaves, and in many teas, the first infusion isn't the one you'll appreciate the most."

Combine this with tea's soothing qualities -- as chanoyu disciple Welch likes to say, "Every cup is like a mini time-out" -- and it starts to look like tea may be the ultimate indulgence for our recession-blasted era. Drink up!

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